Big Treasure Hunt in the Big Apple!

[Thagarr]

[imgleft]http://lh6.ggpht.com/_cQOyQjTP3GY/SzdzZcJpthI/AAAAAAAAAIU/lTv6nE8qBxo/pa-logo.gif[/imgleft]It seems somebody out there wants to give away hefty booty, $10,000 dollars to be exact! Apparently, 3 puppet pirates and a ninja lost their gold in New York City, and they want you to find it for them! If you can find it, it's yours! That doesn't sound like a very piratey thing to do, but I could sure use a spare $10,000! It is all in gold colored $1 US coins. I ran across this story a week ago or so, and I have been trying to track down as much information as I could about who is actually behind this, but I haven't been able to find anything. They had a link to a web page that wasn't active when I first saw this, but it is up and running now. The treasure hunt begins August 1'st, 2010, and videos with clues to the location will be posted on their web site.

Is this for real?

Yes, absolutely. This is not a joke or a stunt.

Prove it.

Well, there's the rub. We can't show footage of the chest going into the ground; it might give something away. However…if you stick around, and look hard, we promise that you will see each and every one of the ten thousand dollar coins in our videos. That's the best we can do.

Is the treasure real gold?

Well…no. The treasure is 10,000 US mint one-dollar coins. Most of them are Sacagawea dollars, or the new Presidential one-dollar coins…the “John Quincy Adams” one is hands down our favorite. So they are gold-colored!!! But “actual gold,” no. Actual currency? Absolutely.

Why would you do this?

We wanted to create a real treasure hunt. If you're reading this, you've found the map, and there's a chest of “gold” waiting to be found. We've always wanted to experience the excitement of searching for pirate treasure, so we decided to give that feeling to everyone else.

Who are you?

We're not telling you.

You can find the web page at WeLostOurGold.com

 

[Stallion]

You guys are ditching your $1 bills? : I still remember when we had $2 bills here, and how having 100 bucks in them in your wallet made you look like a serious high roller.

Back on topic: What happens if the city's rats eat all the coins before somebody finds 'em? Do they still have to pay out?

I suppose I could've thrown a pun in there somewhere about being able to deal with all the rats easily and effectively by dealing with all the rotten apples, but alas, I can't come up with one.

Edit: And what's with pirates and ninjas working together? That's...just not possible. The ramifications of this discovery threaten to short-circuit what little brains I have left! OH NO! THAT MEANS THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING! THE END IS NEAR! WE ARE ABOUT TO BE OVERRUN BY THE SEVEN LEGO MINIFIGS OF THE APOCALYPSE!

Must...lay off...coffee... :wacko:

 

[Thagarr]

We have dumploads of $1 dollar coins just laying around in warehouses, hardly anyone uses them here, they were a BIG flop!

They put it in a convenient rat proof chest!

Not sure what is up with that sneaky Ninja, hopefully the videos released in August will explain more.

 

[Officerpuppy]

I wonder if there will be some kind of security for this, I can already imagine people who figured it out, mugging the other people who figured it out to keep the full amount rather than dividing the loot. :ixi

That chest sure must be heavy too. Definitely not something you want to drag onto the subway :

 

[marbatico]

do americans really only use paper money? we in europe use up to 2 euro coins, only after that it becomes paper money.

 

[Stallion]

They have a mix of paper and coins, with their coins being restricted (I think) to values under one dollar.

Canada is the same as Europe though, it seems, since we have up to two dollar coins, with everything past that being paper.

 

[Thagarr]

do americans really only use paper money?

For the most part, Americans only use plastic money!

Seriously though, Stallion is correct, almost all of our coins are under $1 in value. There have been a couple of tries at releasing dollar coins, but they have never really caught on. The ones that the US mint have tried have been about the size of American quarters, really confusing when your trying to get a Coke out a vending machine! There were $20 gold pieces originally issued back in the mid 1800's, but all gold coins were fazed out in the US back in the 1930's.

 

[marbatico]

we have some limitted edition silver 5 euro coins (i have one of those myself, not that i'm ever going to spent it) and we even have some very rare golden coins wich are worth 100 euro's (its so irritating that my keyboard doesnt have a euro sign)

 

[Thagarr]

Your keyboard may be missing the key marbatico, but I assure you, you can access the symbol from your keyboard! Open any text editor, or you can even use the forum editor, and follow these steps :

1. If your keyboard has a number pad, make sure Num Lock is turned on.

2. Hold down the ALT key, and enter 0128 on your keyboard's keypad, or you can just use the number keys.

3. release the ALT key

And you should see this : €

It, and several other symbols, are produced using ASCII scan codes that are built into the guts of Windows, and almost every other piece of hardware that uses a keyboard. You can find out more about ASCII codes HERE! It is possible that your regional scan codes may differ a bit, but it should function basically the same.

 

[marbatico]

checking: €

cool, thats thagarr!

 

[Peter Blood]

The hunt begins on the first eh? That so happens to be my birthday, maybe I can ask politely where the gold is to the pirates or the ninja and they would give me at least half of the money. But then again, you know how treacherous puppet pirates can be, let alone ninjas.

 

[Thagarr]

Episode 1

 

[Peter Blood]

Too bad I'm not in new York.

 

[Stallion]

I second that. : Where's that "Beam me up, Scotty!" machine when you need it?

 

[Thagarr]

Technically, it doesn't say you actually have to be in New York to find it! :?

Of course, that would give you major advantage though!

 

[Thagarr]

After more than two years, you can finally find out what happened to this treasure! I was wondering why I never heard about anyone finding it ...because no one ever did! I had given up a long time ago and figured it had all just been some kind of publicity stunt, then I ran across this story :

In an adventure about buried treasure (real), pirates (made up) and clues (too complicated, it turned out), the temptation is to talk like a matey and tell the world: The cap’n says to quit yer foolish searching because the booty’s not there now. The laddies who put it in the ground dug it up and gave it away.

The tale began in 2009, when two men from Brooklyn, Vincent Bova and Damien Eckhardt-Jacobi, hid a chest filled with 10,000 one-dollar coins and released eight videos featuring Muppetlike creatures playing pirates who dropped hints about where the loot was. Mr. Bova and Mr. Eckhardt-Jacobi said that whoever found the money could keep it.

Despite the best efforts of treasure hunters who searched for almost three years, no one did.
“We definitely didn’t make it easy,” Mr. Bova said. “I had the feeling it would take time for somebody to find it, and from what I’ve seen on the Internet, people got close.”

After Hurricane Sandy devastated communities not far from their own Brooklyn neighborhoods, Mr. Bova and Mr. Eckhardt-Jacobi decided the money in the ground could be put to better use, and made plans to donate the coins to a group in Far Rockaway, Queens.
Digging up the booty was trickier than it would have been before the hurricane, because the storm had remade the landscape in the woods where they had stashed it. Some of the trees and trails that figured in the video clues were gone, Mr. Bova said. And that was before he took a couple of wrong turns and had to do some backtracking.

You can read the full story HERE!